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Is Google Kubernetes Engine down?

OperationalLast checked Oct 14, 2026, 11:57 PM UTC

Last 90 days

99.734% uptime · 2 incidents
2026-07-17: operational2026-07-18: operational2026-07-19: operational2026-07-20: operational2026-07-21: operational2026-07-22: operational2026-07-23: operational2026-07-24: operational2026-07-25: operational2026-07-26: operational2026-07-27: operational2026-07-28: operational2026-07-29: operational2026-07-30: operational2026-07-31: operational2026-08-01: operational2026-08-02: operational2026-08-03: operational2026-08-04: operational2026-08-05: operational2026-08-06: operational2026-08-07: operational2026-08-08: operational2026-08-09: operational2026-08-10: operational2026-08-11: operational2026-08-12: operational2026-08-13: operational2026-08-14: operational2026-08-15: operational2026-08-16: operational2026-08-17: operational2026-08-18: operational2026-08-19: operational2026-08-20: outage2026-08-21: operational2026-08-22: operational2026-08-23: operational2026-08-24: operational2026-08-25: operational2026-08-26: operational2026-08-27: operational2026-08-28: operational2026-08-29: operational2026-08-30: operational2026-08-31: operational2026-09-01: degraded2026-09-02: operational2026-09-03: operational2026-09-04: operational2026-09-05: operational2026-09-06: operational2026-09-07: operational2026-09-08: operational2026-09-09: operational2026-09-10: operational2026-09-11: operational2026-09-12: operational2026-09-13: operational2026-09-14: operational2026-09-15: operational2026-09-16: operational2026-09-17: operational2026-09-18: operational2026-09-19: operational2026-09-20: operational2026-09-21: operational2026-09-22: operational2026-09-23: operational2026-09-24: operational2026-09-25: operational2026-09-26: operational2026-09-27: operational2026-09-28: operational2026-09-29: operational2026-09-30: operational2026-10-01: operational2026-10-02: operational2026-10-03: operational2026-10-04: operational2026-10-05: operational2026-10-06: operational2026-10-07: operational2026-10-08: operational2026-10-09: operational2026-10-10: operational2026-10-11: operational2026-10-12: operational2026-10-13: operational2026-10-14: operational
2026-07-172026-10-14

What Google Kubernetes Engine does - and how it fails

Google Kubernetes Engine runs the managed control plane your clusters depend on - the API server, scheduler, and etcd. The critical nuance: the GKE SLA covers the control plane, not your workloads. Well-built clusters keep serving traffic through control-plane incidents; what breaks is deploys, autoscaling, and anything that calls the Kubernetes API on its hot path.

  • Kubernetes API errors or timeouts (kubectl hangs, CI/CD deploys fail) while pods keep running
  • Stuck cluster operations: node-pool upgrades, cluster creation, or repairs not progressing
  • Autoscaler paralysis - HPA/cluster-autoscaler can’t act because the control plane is degraded
  • Node-pool level problems in one zone (node registration failures, workload rescheduling storms)

Recent Google Kubernetes Engine incidents

  • Multiple products in us-central1-b are experiencing network service degradation.

    September 1, 2026 · 4h 8m

    Multiple products in us-central1-b are experiencing network service degradation.

  • We are investigating an issue where customers may experience timeouts, service degradations, errors, and elevated latencies across multiple products in the us-west1 region.

    August 20, 2026 · 3h 40m

    We are investigating an issue where customers may experience timeouts, service degradations, errors, and elevated latencies across multiple products in the us-west1 region.

Full analyses live in the post-mortem archive.

Google Kubernetes Engine questions

Is GKE down right now?

The live pill above reflects our latest check. GKE incidents are usually control-plane scoped: if kubectl fails but your Services still answer traffic, that pattern is exactly a control-plane event - your data plane is fine.

My pods are running but kubectl times out - is that a GKE outage?

Very likely, yes - and it is the most common GKE failure mode. The control plane (API server) is a Google-managed regional or zonal component. Workloads on the nodes continue serving; deploys, scaling actions, and operators that watch the API are what stall.

What does the GKE SLA actually cover?

A regional cluster’s control plane carries a 99.95% monthly uptime SLA (zonal control planes are 99.5%). It covers Kubernetes API availability - not your pods, nodes, or application traffic. Workload availability is your architecture’s job: multi-zone node pools, PodDisruptionBudgets, and not depending on the API server at request time.

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